Teachers are the individuals who are tasked with providing exceptional literacy experiences for children on a daily basis. It is our belief that if teachers receive the support they need, they can have a profound impact on children’s early literacy development. This section provides resources to support teachers in their efforts to improve students’ early literacy achievement.
The Early Literacy and Assessment for Learning (K–3) Series booklets are for practical use and include assessments, instructional tools, and activities teachers can use in their classrooms. What makes these little booklets distinctive is that they are written from the teacher’s point of view. To learn more about the assessments that accompany the series, go to Literacy Assessments.
Assessment for Learning (224K)
Print Literacy (285K)
Letter Knowledge (249K)
Word Identification (225K)
Exploring Comprehension (246K)
Little Honu’s Journey (746K)
Young children’s environment should be rich in print. A literate classroom offers a tremendous number of opportunities for children to make use of print and practice literacy habits and skills throughout the classroom environment. Creating Literate Environments is a resource that will assist you to plan and develop classroom environments that will engage students in meaningful learning experiences.
Creating Literate Environments (661K)
Developing Leveled Early Readers is one resource created to address the desire and need to create more printed materials. It can assist educators in determining the purpose for developing reading materials, ways to develop materials, and the varying text factors that must be taken into consideration for students in different stages of reading development. It is recommeded that this guide be used in conjuction with Using Microsoft Publisher 2000 to Develop Local Language Materials.
Developing Leveled Early Readers (326K)
Having a wide variety of early literacy resources to support the diverse interests and needs of students is always a challenge. Using Microsoft Publisher 2000 to Develop Local Language Materials is a guide to support educators’ use of Microsoft Publisher to develop materials, including books and instructional resources in multiple languages. Complete Guide (2.4M).
Getting Started with Microsoft Publisher (580K)
Inserting Pages, Images, and Text (1.4M)
Printing and Hints (614K)
Shared reading is an effective way to engage students in meaningful reading experiences. This resource provides a step-by-step process to support those interested in using shared reading with their students.
Shared Reading (210K)
Interactive writing is an excellent kindergarten through grade 2 teaching and learning activity that supports strong reading and writing connections. Through interactive writing, students learn about the process of writing as they plan and write together with the support of their teacher.
Interactive Writing (113K)
The Alphabet Chart is a clearly written chart with letters in both upper and lower case form and a corresponding word represented by a picture—helping children link letters with sounds and words. The Alphabet Chart is available in the following languages:
Chuukese (122K)
English (340K)
Kosraean (158K)
Marshallese (200K)
Palauan (208K)
Pohnpeian (272K)
Yapese (186K)
This short user-friendly guide introduces teachers and parents to activities that can be used with students to promote flexible letter learning by using the Alphabet Chart.
Suggested Uses for the Alphabet Charts (301K)
Each book of the Island Alphabet series, which features languages and children’s artwork from the U.S.-affiliated Pacific, contains the complete alphabet for the language, examples for each letter, and a word list with English translations.
Carolinian (1.8M)
Chamorro (2.2M)
Chuukese (1.2M)
English (1.6M)
Hawaiian (838K)
Kosraean (1.2M)
Marshallese (1.4M)
Palauan (928K)
Pohnpeian (1.1M)
Samoan (855K)
This short user-friendly guide introduces teachers and parents to activities that can be used with students to promote flexible letter learning by using the Island Alphabet Books.
Suggested Activities for Using the Island Alphabet Books and Beyond (427K)
Because the Pacific languages are phonetically regular—with a one-to-one match between sounds and symbols—alphabet instruction takes on a different emphasis from the common English alphabet. This guide provides instructional activities that teachers can use to support children’s knowledge and use of their Pacific island alphabetic systems.
Strategies for Learning the Pohnpei Alphabet (340K)
Children’s learning is influenced a great deal by their families and their parents are their first teachers. This resource provides a process that teachers and parents can use to share information about students’ literacy learning.
Involving Parents in Student Achievement (118K)
Reflecting on assessment results provides teachers and administrators with important information that informs teaching and learning. This resource provides a process to help educators make sense of student assessment results.
Using Assessment Data to Improve Student Learning (107K)
Assessing Reading Fluency discusses research on assessments for monitoring students’ fluency in terms of accuracy, automaticity, and prosody.
Assessing Reading Fluency (1.8M)
A Focus on Fluency is the first booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading series published by the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) at Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL). This booklet summarizes research on fluency and fluency instruction and describes strategies for fluency instruction. It also explains various ways of conducting repeated oral reading, the use of independent silent reading, an integrated fluency instruction approach, the role of texts, and fluency assessment. Complete booklet (1.9M).
Reading Fluency (1.2M)
Instruction in Fluency (961K)
Determining Fluency (569K)
A Focus on Vocabulary, the second booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading Series, explores vocabulary development as a component of reading comprehension by describing what research says about how students acquire vocabulary and about instruction that helps students develop the kind of vocabulary knowledge that will contribute to their reading success. Complete booklet (1.9M).
What is Vocabulary (1.0M)
Instruction in Vocabulary (788K)
A Focus on Comprehension, the third booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading Series, highlights the importance of reading comprehension. In this easy-to-read resource, the authors not only examine the factors that affect reading comprehension, but also explore components of effective comprehension instruction. Complete booklet (3.7M).
What is Comprehension (2.9M)
Comprehension Instruction (792K)
Assessing Comprehension (261K)
The purpose of this paper is to describe how the visual environment—what we see when we look—can be used to develop both visual and verbal literacy, including aesthetic appreciation, comprehension, and vocabulary.
Look and See: Using the Visual environment as Access to Literacy (1.1M)